


Hackedtale AU: The Q&A Book

by Scarlet_Streak



Series: HackedTale AU [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: AU - Hackedtale, Ask anything about it, If anyone wants to know more about the AU, Look in here, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Q&A, Story, info, sfw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-02 23:47:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15807006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarlet_Streak/pseuds/Scarlet_Streak
Summary: Temporary location for the Official Q&A of Hackedtale





	1. Note

Ok, before we get to the good part of this, I just have some quick notes:

The Hackedtale AU is something I've been working on for about a year and a half now. A lot of it is based on theories about the game and facts about computer programming.

I recently posted a reader insert for it called ["How to Debug a Mood"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15795159). I'm pretty sure I'm going to get some questions about the AU itself, so this is just a collection of all the information I have on the AU while I try to put the story together.

Feel free to ask any questions about the AU in the comments, but please try to keep them SFW! Also, if this gets enough attention, I might make a Tumblr Blog where I can put all the concept art and story scraps that I have.


	2. Designs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Character appearance designs and other visual/story details

##  **Soul color**

A monster’s soul reflects whether they have had their memories restored or not. A white (read as normal) soul is a monster who has had their memory, while a soul with restored memory starts to show the dominant colors. Children’s souls are solid colors. The reasoning is that white is a reflection of all the colors back to the eye, which means that the monster souls have all the colors present at once. This is because, considering the almost constant resets, they don’t exist long enough to form a soul trait. With each reset, they are at most a day or so old, returning their souls to an almost newborn state. Returning the memories (or days of life) to a monster allows their soul to settle upon a trait (or multiple traits). Excluded from this idea is Frisk, whose soul has a predetermined color.

Next, I’ll talk about each of the soul colors for the character and the reasoning behind each choice. All of my soul color choices are based on [this graphic](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Fk3cBXNjXXA/WP_qmZXy9cI/AAAAAAAABAE/HPnPMtwBoKYDObHnfGgrSANCaI0ZgLqYgCJoC/w530-h316-n/17%2B-%2B1) (Can someone find the original so I can credit it?)

  * Undyne’s soul base color is orange for bravery and yellow for justice, with a core of red for determination.
  * Mettaton’s base color is a rich pink for dedication, with swirls of royal blue for sincerity and a darker orange for audacity.
  * Alphys’s is mostly green for kindness, with splashes of yellow for justice, maybe leaning towards a goldenrod yellow to add a bit of courage.
  * Sans’s soul is blue with tinges of yellow for justice and red tendrils around it for determination, but his soul is dull from his low HP (which doubles as Hit Points and Hope).
  * Toriel’s has a green base for kindness, with a core of red, to symbolize her determination to keep the fallen children safe, and mint green swirls for understanding.
  * Asgore’s is blue for integrity, fading to royal blue, then to purple for perseverance, and finally to pink.
  * Flowey has a voided soul, which will be black, to show an absence of light symbolizing the missing soul, with trails of red around the space to represent the determination holding him together.
  * I want to do something special for Papyrus, because his soul could represent so many traits, and I really feel like I could give him any color and it would still fit. So, Papyrus has a very bright white soul, with a light rainbow sheen to distinguish it from an unrestored soul.
  * Now for NPCs who don’t play a large role, but still have soul colors.
  * Monster Kid has a solid green soul for kindness. Considering that he's a child, he only has one color, like Frisk and the rest of the fallen children.
  * Grillby’s soul is mainly light blue for patience, with splashes of lime green for courtesy and indigo for rectitude.
  * Muffet’s soul is pink, with touches of purple and red.
  * Nicecream guy has a base of green, with swirls of red, purple, and royal blue.
  * Burgerpants has a more complicated soul. His soul will be dull, for a lack of hope, but that doesn’t change his assigned traits. The soul will start blue, then fade to purple, then to red as it goes in towards the center.



 Finally, we’ll do the dogs of the Royal Guard, starting with Lesser and Greater dog. They have solid color souls, with Greater dog’s being orange and Lesser dog’s being goldenrod. Dogamy and Dogaressa both have the colors of orange, red, and pink. Dogamy’s is orange on the outside, then red, then pink in the middle, and Dogaressa’s is the opposite, with pink on the outside, then red, then orange in the middle. Finally, we have Doggo. His base color is purple, with splashes of light blue and red

##  **Outfit changes**

(Shh... Spoilers)

_Book 1_

No outfit changes whatsoever

 

_Book 2_

So I’m not going to change a lot of outfits in book 2 AU, except for Papyrus. Most of the changes will be bloodstains and Frisk’s injuries:

Sans and Flowey have the most blood on them, from being in proximity to injured Frisk.

Flowey’s will be mostly on his petals and leave, while Sans’s will probably have more story behind it. He will definitely accumulate them overtime.

The big one I’m considering is one on his skull, either on his cheek or forehead, which would be a bloody handprint from Frisk patting him to try to comfort him, possibly as she is dying, assuming I don’t have her die instantly. Other stains will be on his jacket or shirt from where her wounds have bled while he carried her.

Most of the character’s hands, and, in Flowey’s case, leaves, will have blood dried blood on them from taking turns stopping the worst of Frisk’s bleeding. It will be especially apparent on Papyrus, Sans, Toriel, because of the fact that their hands would be white.

Papyrus wears more functional travel clothes after being told by Sans his Battle suit wouldn’t hold up during the journey in an attempt to get him not to come. He will be wearing an old sweater from Toriel (May or may not have belonged to Asgore) and a pair of pants sewn together from scraps so they fit properly. His normal gloves and boots will be replaced by yellow knit mittens from Toriel (Belonging to Asgore as well) and a pair of old red rain boots he found.

 Frisk will have multiple wounds, the worst being her legs, which will only be seen once Toriel sets them in splints, and a bad one on her side from the fight with Undyne.

 

_Book 3_

Warning: Spoilers ahead 

Gaster, appearing for the first time in book 3, will definitely have an altered design, but it will be under his own category because he’s just that complicated.

Sans wears long black pants instead of basketball shorts, running shoes instead of slippers, and a blue jacket with grey stripes down the side of the arms instead of his sweater. He also wears a pair of black gloves, the kind with the fingers meant to interact with touchscreens.

Flowey has a tiny yellow and green sweater for when he travels in the Void, knitted for him by Toriel, because the image made me laugh.

The warmer clothes are because of how cold the void is. It’s difficult to last in there for long without proper clothing.

In Chara’s appearance, she will be in her mid-teens, in the green and yellow single stripe sweater, but covered in dust and her own blood. That isn’t really a major change, but I thought it might be important for references 

 

 _Other_  

Characters only affected by Frisk’s bloodstains/other minor alterations like soul color:

  * Toriel
  * Undyne
  * Alphys
  * Mettaton (EX)
  * Asgore
  * Monster Kid
  * Muffet
  * Grillby



Characters with no alterations:

  * Mettaton (Normal)
  * NPCs like Nicecream Guy, Bratty and Catty, Burgerpants, Etc.
  * NPCs like Froggits, Whimsums, Etc.



##  **The Void**

The Void in this AU is the source code for the game. Basically, it’s all the technical stuff hidden in the layer behind the output, or the game. There are defined ways into it, like the Core or the Gray door, but only certain characters whose souls either contain determination naturally or have been injected with determination can survive the experience of being decompiled while in the void. However, ways can be forcibly made into it, like Sans’s shortcuts which do not cause decompiling. This is because the aforementioned main doorways act as a compiler, processing the code of the game to become the output that is the game itself, while these other ways are literally to allow access to the code with the intent of looking at or changing it.

The image in my head is kind of like space, but instead of stars, planets, etc. the code is floating around. Code varies in colors, and the active code will be lit up. The base color for the writing is blue, while variable types and the like (print, if, for, etc) would have colors based on type. For example, variable type declarers might be yellow or something.

It will be extremely cold because most computers need to be kept cool to function properly.

##  **The Core**

The Core took a lot of thinking to find a tie-in, but, as I was coming up with Gaster’s backstory, it hit me. The Core is the Compiler, or the thing that translates the source code into binary that the computer can run. It's effectively the life support of the game. If the core stopped working, the code for the game would also stop working.

So, one more time, here’s how a Compiler works (Because it’s really important):

  1. Starts as Coding language (Understandable by Humans              
  2. Becomes Binary         
  3. Enters Compiler
  4. Becomes something that can create an Output, either standing alone or going through an interpreter




	3. Basic Q&A

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The basic, spoiler-free Q&A

##  **What role will the NPCs outside of the Main Characters play?**

Ok, so there’s a reason that the NPCs are divided into the following two categories:

  * NPCs like Nicecream Guy, Bratty and Catty, Burgerpants, Etc.
  * NPCs like Froggits, Whimsums, Etc.



NPCs that are vendors or non-fighting characters can’t cause Frisk additional harm and have individuality. Their roles will mostly be of compassion and support, and won’t follow the adventure. The only exceptions would be the dogs, Lesser and Greater Dog, Dogamy and Dogaressa, and Doggo. They will appear in their fights where Frisk will struggle to complete the parameters to spare them.

NPCs that are from encounters (besides the dogs) could cause damage, and I don’t want that! Sans is going to mess with the code that prompts random encounters to cause them not to happen, like applying a repel in Pokemon (I have no better examples). Those characters will be ambient or in passing, maybe like a Woshua trying to help clean Frisk’s wound, a Vegetoid offering her a snack, or Shyren singing to her to get her to sleep. Little kind gestures from the monsters.

##  **What type of code is in the Void?**

Ok, so this is a complicated question that I had to research. Toby Fox made Undertale using GameMaker, which uses its own unique scripting language: GameMaker Language. After I found this out, I had to do research on scripting languages and the GameMaker Language.

So, a scripting language is is a programming language that supports scripts: programs written for a special run-time environment that automate the execution of tasks that could alternatively be executed one-by-one by a human operator. Scripted languages are interpreted within another program (like JavaScript is put within HTML and then interpreted by the browser). Programming languages are compiled into a more compact form that does not need to be interpreted by another application in the same way. The compiled result is stand-alone. Sadly, all I knew when I started this were programming languages like C. I didn’t learn JavaScript for a few more months. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the gamemaker language structure has a lot of similarities to C (which probably shouldn’t have surprised me, but I was happy to not have to learn new stuff for this language). Basically this means that, even though I’m unfamiliar with the commands, I can understand the structure and what the code is doing.

So yeah. The code in the Void is GameMaker Language.

##  **How did the changes to Frisk’s code affect her?**

So, the changes that Sans and Flowey made to Frisk changed her from an Avatar to an NPC. The big idea for this is the fact that the monsters never seem to take any visible, physical damage from the attacks besides the blow that kills them. So, moving Frisk, who was never visibly taking damage, to the same code as them would allow her to take theoretical physical damage.

From that, I’ve decided that the only physical damage that would need to be healed on the monsters’ bodies would be that one killing blow. Then they’d be fine. However, a human would take more physical damage while fighting, therefore the healing of the single killing blow would render the body livable, but would leave behind the other wounds.

The healing occurs when Frisk resets. For example, I decided that the first reset would occur after the fall. That’s how a child could survive the fall from the Surface to the Underground, even with the golden flowers breaking her fall. Going on that, whatever injury killed Frisk wasn’t the one that broke her legs. I haven’t specified what that killing injury was, so feel free to decide for yourself! Anyways, after each reset, Frisk loses 1 HP (Doubling, as I said before, as both Hit points and Hope) to signify that her body is becoming less and less resilient. She starts the game with 19 HP instead of 20, because in this AU the first reset happens after the fall. The killing blow was something like cracking her skull or breaking her neck. Along with that, however, she received multiple cuts, bruises, and the broken legs mentioned earlier. But I’ve digressed.

This fact mean she can lose 19 battles before her HP reaches zero. With each battle, her soul loses a bit of color, which I will be equating to losing her HP and determination as her soul and body weaken in tandem.

Since food and sleep only heal HP, not the body itself, all healing her HP will do is prolong her suffering after a killing blow has been struck. The upside is she can’t receive another killing blow after one has been received, and she won’t die of anything other than a killing blow, but that also means that none of her other injuries fully heal, and, no matter how much pain she’s in, Frisk can’t really die.

Except when her HP becomes 0. That means that any injury is a killing blow, and at this point she will no longer be able to reset. She’ll be permanently dead.

But that won’t happen, right?

##  **How are Backdoors synonymous with Shortcuts?**

This actually comes from a hacking term for a way to bypass security measures to access a system. So, yeah. It shows that Sans has become more versed in what he’s doing. That’s why I use only Shortcut in Book 1, both terms interchangeably as Book 2 goes on, and only Backdoor in Book 3.

##  **What’s the difference between a scripting language and a regular coding language?**

I had to get this explained to me. The exact difference is in the way they work. So, the need to recompile is important in coding languages, but not in scripting languages. Changes made to the source code in scripting languages go straight from the compiler (or interpreter, as it is sometimes known in scripting languages) to output! That’s how changes to the source code work in this story.

So yeah. That’s the difference between scripting languages and coding languages.

##  **What’s the difference between Code and Magic?**

Ok, so, I want to clear up another minor misconception that people might have: Magic versus Code. They’re two completely separate things in this AU. The magic is an integral part of the monsters in the Underground, and would continue to remain attached to the characters even after they leave the Underground. After all, monsters are made of magic. It would be incredibly difficult to come up for an explanation for removing their magic and allowing them to continue existing outside the Underground. The Code and its influence, however, are exclusive to the setting of the game. The Code acts as a puppet master, controlling the characters and forcing them to follow the story of the game. It can only exist in the Underground, because that’s the only place where it is physically present.


	4. Complicated Q&A

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Spoilers Ahead! Turn back if you want anything in the story to be surprising.
> 
> I can already tell that book three is going to cause some even bigger questions, like why Sans needs to enter the files, why he needs to enter multiple files, what’s up with Gaster, How do all these timelines match up, how does this multiverse theory inside a singular universe thing work, etc.
> 
> So, here we are, reading to answer the more complicated, weird questions.

##  **Frisk vs Chara**

Ok, I didn’t really explain this well in book one, so let me elaborate. At the beginning of _Diving into the Code_ , Sans states that they’ll be able to see what kind of day it’s going to be. That’s because Frisk’s (Or Chara’s) appearance depends on which route they are doing. In this story, Frisk is a young child of around 6 years old, and Chara is a teenager of around 15 years old. If the player does a true pacifist, the avatar takes on the appearance of Frisk. If they do a true genocide, the avatar takes on the appearance of Chara.

You might be asking what happens when the player does a Neutral route. Basically, if neither the true pacifist nor true genocide requirements are met or are possible, the avatar takes on aspects of both characters for the duration of the neutral route. A constant appearance is Frisk’s sweater and Chara’s open eyes. The age of this hybrid appearance is reliant on how many monsters they’ve killed, each age based on one of the nine main neutral endings. The hybrid looks around 7 years old if everyone has been spared, and around 14 if a no mercy neutral route has been completed.

##  **Realities, Barriers, and Time flow**

So, as I was writing all this stuff, I realized something. I needed to figure out how there was an actual world on the other side of the Barrier for the monsters to come into. No world was coded in the game beyond a few images and the sunrise scene, but one will be necessary for the beginning of Book 3. Also, a world will be needed on the other side of the screen, for a player to exist, and the underground will have to basically exist simultaneously with these two separate worlds, henceforth referred to as realities.

These realities are extremely similar, following the same flow of time. The biggest difference is the barrier between them and the underground. Our reality, which we’ll call Reality 1, is divided from the underground by the screen. We view it as a game. There is no way to travel between the two places. The barrier between the other reality, Reality 2, and the underground the the actual Barrier, as it exists in the game. That barrier can be broken, allowing the monsters to pass into Reality 2. The monsters and Frisk can pass between the underground and Reality 2 whenever they want, but the people of Reality 2 cannot enter the underground, because they aren’t connected to the code. Mount Ebott exists in Reality 2, but not in Reality 1. The city outside of Mount Ebott doesn’t have a name, so the readers are welcome to name it whatever they want.

Another important fact is that the underground’s timeflow doesn’t parallel Realities 1 and 2. It has its own flow, based on the events that happen in the game, using the save files and main timeline as references. It’s kind of like a bubble, with the barrier creating the bubble itself.

##  **Timelines, Routes, and Save files**

Ok, a major part of book three is Sans traveling through the code to reach the save files to retrieve pieces of Frisk’s code. You may be wondering how this works. Let me explain it!

First I’m going to explain the first four routes done in this story, mostly because they are the most important ones. They go in this exact order:

  1. True Neutral - The first time the game is run. Frisk doesn’t kill anyone, but a Neutral run has to be completed before a Pacifist run can be completed.
  2. True Pacifist - No kills with the actual Pacifist ending
  3. Genocide Run Averted by Papyrus - Kills everything up until meeting Papyrus
  4. True Genocide - Kills everyone



Now let’s start talking about how this timeline thingy works. In this AU there are 2 timeline types: The linear one, which most of the story takes place in, and the save files, which mirror the main timeline. Both timelines cover the same period of time, but in different ways. The main timeline follows the mathematical definition of a ray, continuing forever in one direction from a starting point, like a traditional timeline, while the save files are like connected line segments. Everything that happens in the main timeline happens in the save files, but the save files are self-contained from beginning to end. They are literally their own universes, with a start and a finish. They don’t continue after their completion.

Now, you might be wondering how this works, and why it needs to work. Let’s start with the why. Basically, when a program is running, not all of the code is active all the time. Only the necessary code is active. Because of this, Sans, since he can only interact with active code, can’t just enter one of them to retrieve the code. He has to enter enough timelines to retrieve all of Frisk’s code. But, since writing every single timeline would take forever, I’m only going to write the main first four, because those four will provide the main aspects of her code:

  1. True Neutral - Basic framework for her code/soul
  2. True Pacifist - Frisk
  3. Genocide Run Averted by Papyrus - A neutral run to represent the many neutral runs
  4. True Genocide - Chara



One more thing before we continue. The pieces of code make up her soul, which means that, when Sans collects a piece of code from a save file, he stores it as a soul piece.

Now let me explain my reasoning for the pieces each route contains. Please keep in mind that these don’t reflect the actual game and what code is active when. The first Neutral Run, especially if you do the Pacifist Neutral, is basically set up for the rest of the game. You learn all the controls, characters, areas, etc. That’s why I decided that the framework can be found there. Next, per the lore of this AU, the code that makes up the entity that is Frisk is found in the Pacifist route, when she is truly herself, so that is where Sans will collect the first piece of her soul that contains her code. The Genocide Run Averted by Papyrus is just standing in to represent the main nine neutral paths, which Sans will go through to collect the parts of the second piece, ending on this save file, which is the one I will write. The third piece, found in the Genocide run, is necessary because the code for Chara is an integral part of Frisk, even if it isn’t exactly the best one. Therefore, he still needs to collect Chara’s active code to complete the soul.

Now that we’ve gone over the why, let’s focus on the how. The save files are somewhere inside the source code, represented by labeled doorways. When Sans interacts with the doorways, he can choose a save point to load. The save points are basically fixed entrances in timelines that provide doorways into the file. Sans can enter and exit through them.

These save points save the active code of Frisk’s soul, because it shows what code needs to be active for the rest of the game. To retrieve a copy of this code, Sans needs to interact with the soul itself. This doesn’t cause any pain, but the difficulty of retrieving the code will be based on how willing that version of Frisk (Or Chara) is to help him.

The first three timelines will be willing to help him, but the third may need a bit of coaxing. Retrieving Chara’s code will definitely take a full-on battle.

##  **The Continuity - and - The Story of Doctor Gaster**

So, the continuity of this AU is kind of weird. How could Gaster exist if the game can’t exist without the code? How could all those accidents happen? I could pull a “Because I say so”, but I don’t want to. So, get ready for my exceptionally long explanation.

Basically, this AU bases itself off of two continuities. The main one, the one completely in effect, spans from Frisk’s fall to whatever ending is achieved, or the continuity of the game as a whole. Next, we have the continuity of the AU, set from the backgrounds given to us in-game by Toby Fox. This spans from before the banishment of the monsters to modern day. But here’s the thing that makes this really cool. _It never actually happened in the Continuity of the Game_. Basically, all this stuff is a concept in Toby Fox and the fandoms brains. There’s no cutscene showing this. There’s no going back in time. It’s just lore that exists outside of the timescope of the game. That’s where Gaster exists. Now this is where it gets really weird, so bear with me.

There’s a few theories floating around on how Gaster became the forgotten blobby creature we see in-game. My personal favorites are that he injected himself with Determination, a clue we get from the similarities in his appearance and the appearances of the Amalgamates, the DT Extraction Machine in the True Lab, and the lines of one of his followers. The second is that he fell into the Core, which is also supported by the lines of one of his followers. So I’m going to take both of these clues and make the theory for this AU.

Still with me? Good.

So, what’s similar for all the characters that have shown that they can reset? They’re all connected to the Determination trait, Frisk because of her soul and Flowey because of the DT injection Alphys gave him to bring him back to life. These are a solid fact. Here’s where I break into speculation. Both of these characters can remember resets. Who else can basically remember/feel the resets? Sans! I’m going to guess that somewhere along the line he gained Determination. To help me out with this, I’m going to link to [this lovely theory](http://aminoapps.com/page/undertale/9226746/why-does-sans-remember-every-timeline%C2%A0) by UTdork358 on Amino.

It has the basic idea of what I’m trying to explain and puts the thoughts in my brain into words, which is incredibly helpful. This is why in my AU he can interact with the code.

Next, in this theory, injecting yourself with determination, or any other distilled trait that isn’t your own, corrupts your code, like it did to the monsters that became amalgamates, causing a breakdown in visual rendering and soul stability. Broken code may attempt to repair itself by bonding itself with other broken code, which is how the Amalgamates stabilized. Gaster, however, never stabilized himself, which is how he retained his individuality and was able to access the code.

Now, based on my theories and ideas, here’s the story for what happened to Doctor Gaster in Hackedtale.

Gaster injects himself with determination and becomes what we see him as. He also discovers the code, but can’t edit it. Sans is the only character who can reach the code using his shortcuts. Gaster decides to find a different way into the code. After a lot research, he discovers the true use of the Core. He thinks that maybe if he can get to his code through the Core, he can fix what happened to him. But, when he enters into the core from the game's side, it tries to decompile him from an output back to binary and code, but the determination continues to hold him together, reducing him to a state of semi-decompiled, semi-deleted, semi-solid code floating around in the void. I know that’s a lot of ‘semi’s, but there’s no better word for it.

Now that his story has been explained, I’ll start to go into his appearance and abilities in the AU.

In the world of the Game, Gaster can only remain stable for a few minutes at a time, which is how you can see him in the room. He’s afraid to touch anyone in case his code tries to bond with them, but he also wants to keep an eye on the Underground, so he slips out of the Void from time to time.

His followers, like Goner Kid, are his attempts to manipulate the code. Instead of experimenting on existing code, he tries to copy it, but he still can’t get it quite right. They share his inability to remain stable outside of the Void for long periods of time. However, since they don’t have Determination, they decompile as soon as they enter the Void.

Gaster looks different depending on which world he is in. In the game world, he appears as he does normally. In the void, however, he’s got a more defined shape and is comprised of tightly compressed binary and code in colors that match the area of his body where the binary/code is located. His face is made of two parentheses, two zeros, and two ones. Gaster’s soul will be a clouded dark red, a mix of color absence and red to signify his time as deleted code sustained by determination, and visible constantly in the void.

##  **Putting a Soul Back Together**

The idea of fixing the corrupted code of a voided soul is a very important part of this story. There are three characters with unstabilized corrupted souls: Flowey, Gaster, and, by the end of book two, Frisk.

As stated earlier, souls/code can become corrupted by being injected with a trait that doesn’t belong to it. If the trait is determination, the corrupted code with continue to hold itself together, and can stabilize by combining with another piece of corrupted code, which is why the amalgamates aren’t corrupted, but Gaster is. Flowey’s stabilized by combining with one of the flowers, but that isn’t really important to the story.

Souls/code can also be corrupted by someone meddling with them, which is what happens to Frisk. Once a soul with a trait has been corrupted, said trait will drain out of it as the corruption spreads. The difference between this type of corruption and the other type is that the code will not hold itself together, which is why Frisk’s soul will immediately need to be placed in a holding unit until a non-corrupted version of the code can be put into it.

This leads us to how a corrupted soul can be fixed. The only method of fixing a corrupted soul is, as stated above, to replace the corrupted code. Also, if the soul had a trait, the trait must be returned to it to complete the process and, if the soul didn’t have a trait, the trait must be removed. But, if the code hasn’t been repaired and the trait holding the soul together is removed, the soul will fall down.

 


	5. Reader Characters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, when I was trying to figure out a way to get people interested in this AU, I decided to make a couple of reader inserts. They're doing ok, so I thought I'd give them their own full section. Just to get this out of the way, the reader inserts are in fact canon unless I state otherwise.

##  **General**

Before we get into the specifics of the characters (because there are two separate reader characters), there’s some information that will be true for both of them that I want to get out of the way:

  1. I’m going to keep all the pronouns gender neutral, just because writing a male and a female version sounds difficult. You’re welcome to see the character as whatever gender you want.
  2. Both have prechosen occupations. I'm sorry.



##  **Sans’s Reader Character**

  1. The reader will be a computer programmer who is still in school, just so they can be useful. If the reader character wasn’t a computer programmer, they might as well not be in the story at all.
  2. The reader probably has glasses. Sitting in front of a computer all day is bound to mess up your eyes after a certain point. I can attest to that.
  3. I chose some outfits ahead of time. I apologize in advance for the shirts.
  4. I also apologize for my computer programming pun/reference attempts. They may be as painful as the shirts.



##  **Papyrus’s Reader Character**

  1. The reader is a botanist. Look, it’s really important for the story too. Enjoy your new Botany degree.
  2. The reader moved to Ebott city hoping to kickstart their research and accidentally got themselves stuck there.
  3. The reader works a lot of jobs in different places around the city. The most important places story-wise are a coffee shop, a grocery store, a diner, and a museum.



##  **Completed Reader Inserts**

[How to Debug a Bad Mood (x Sans)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15795159)

[Mourning Flowers (x Papyrus)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15889302)

 


	6. OCs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I’m no idiot. I get that I’ve put two reader characters in the same universe who are interacting with the same people. I also know for a fact that their paths will cross. So, I’m going to present the OCs that will be used when they appear in each other’s stories. Yeah, they’re both of above average height. I just sort of wanted to make them tall. Also, I know I get super specific about coloration, but it’s just because I want to get the picture in my head into everyone else’s. However, if I don’t bring it up, you’re free to fill in the blanks.

##  **Grace Simmons**

Grace is the OC version of Sans’s reader character. Here’s a general breakdown for appearance:

Hair color: Dark Brown

Eye Color: Gray

Height: 5’7”

Outside of these, Grace is of an average weight, and is the kind of pale you get from spending way too much time inside looking at a computer. She also has glasses, again from too much time inside looking at a computer.  She’s introverted, but talkative once you get to know her. She’s also very blunt, which can be taken as rude by strangers. A fun fact about Grace is that  her dad is also a computer programmer, and she was named after [Grace Hopper](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper). 

##  **Evan Carter**

You’ve probably guessed this already, but Evan Carter is Papyrus’s OC. Here’s his general appearance breakdown:

Hair Color: Strawberry Blonde

Eye Color: Hazel

Height: 6’2”

Evan’s got a slight tan from all the time spent hiking around Mt. Ebott on the weekends, but it’s the kind that always makes you look a little bit like you’ve got a sunburn. Don’t really know how else to describe it. Of the two OCs, he’s the older one, getting closer to his late twenties. He can be outgoing once he gets past his bumbling introductions, but he’ll always be a bit rambly, and will always second guess himself.


End file.
